(JTA) — A recently discovered amulet created in the Lodz Ghetto by a son for his mother was given to a Holocaust institute in Israel.
“With love to Mom, from Avram. Lodz Ghetto. March, 1943,” reads the inscription in Polish on the amulet, which was made from two old coins. The son apparently made the amulet for his mother so she would not forget him if he was sent to the gas chambers.
The amulet, which also includes a drawing of the ghetto and the mother’s initials, was given this week to the Shem Olam Institute for Education, Documentation and Research on Faith and the Holocaust located in Kfar Haroeh in Israel, Ynet reported. Its existence was recently discovered.
A Polish man reportedly found the amulet in the ruins of the ghetto; his heirs turned it over to the institute.
The son and his mother were sent to a death camp the year after the amulet was created, the institute told Ynet. Also, other family members including a husband and father, and older brothers and sons were sent to a labor camp and died in a death camp the year before the amulet was created.
“The exciting discovery tells of a love story between a son and his mother,” Rabbi Dr. Avraham Krieger, director of the Shem Olam Institute, told Ynet. “More than anything, in the face of oppression and extermination, they wanted to remember each other from inside one of the most crowded and cruel ghettos in Poland.”
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